February was a very busy month for me, so I didn’t get a whole lot of board gaming in. Especially when it comes to the Marvel Champions card game from Fantasy Flight Games (FFG). I did get a chance to go back to North Carolina and play the game with my dad, but we ended up playing Rhino again since we convinced my wife to play (that’s a story for another time). I was fortunate enough to get a copy of The Wrecking Crew scenario expansion, it wasn’t until earlier this week that I was able to get it to the table and try it out.

The Wrecking Crew is a very interesting type of scenario for Marvel Champions. First of all, how many people actually had heard of these guys prior to this game? I’ve read a lot of Marvel comics, but I *may* have heard their names once or twice and that’s it. So it was kind of surprising that FFG decided to follow up the Green Goblin with a villain scenario that many were probably not familiar with. Although - quick spoiler - the scenario worked really well, so maybe it goes to show how much life this game can have. We haven’t even covered all the major villains, and yet FFG is able to pull out lesser known villains to use for content.

For those that haven’t looked into the Wrecking Crew, the scenario changes up the Marvel Champions formula by offering 4 different villains (the Wrecker, Piledriver, Thunderball, and Bulldozer) instead of just one. The pack comes with normal and expert versions of each villain, plus a side scheme tailored to each villain and their own encounter deck. As far as setup goes, it is one of the easiest as you don’t need to grab the standard and extra encounter decks and mix them in. It also means that you don’t have to worry about your Nemesis deck or your obligations. Don’t start thinking this scenario will be easy though, as if you aren’t on your A-game, this Crew will walk all over you.

For reference, I played this scenario 2 player: I played the basic Justice Iron Man deck and Jeremy, the other player, used a custom Protection Spider-Man deck. After playing through our first player turns, it came to the villain phase where I found out how the Wrecking Crew actually worked. First of all, the main scheme “Breakout” is a joke. If this is the way that you fail this scenario, then something seriously has gone wrong. First of all, it has a max of 6 per person, but only generates 1 (not per person, just one) threat each round. What the scheme does do is provide the mechanics for the rest of the scenario to play out. 

After putting one threat on Breakout, you then are instructed to put one threat on each of the side schemes that are in play. Then, you see which Wrecking Crew member has the highest threat on their scheme and they become the “main villain”. Which means that they are the villain that attacks/schemes against each hero. Also, you will draw cards from their encounter deck for the boost cards and encounter phase.* If that seems bad enough, each side scheme has an effect that will trigger if 10 or more threats are placed on it.

(*Note: some encounter/boost cards might change who the main villain is in the middle of the villain phase, but as a general rule this is how it will work).

Since I was playing Iron Man, Piledriver’s side scheme was the most worrisome for me. Having to discard my highest costing upgrade or support? That could “wreck” my deck as I’m trying to build up his armor. So I made an effort to try and keep the threat off of that scheme. It did trigger once, but “fortunately” I was able to discard Pepper Potts instead of my armor that gave me +6 hit points. While I managed the threat on all the different side schemes, Jeremy went to work taking out the villains one by one.

The Wrecker and Bulldozer went down fairly quickly. We saved Piledriver for third as we waited for large amounts of damage to deal to him to mitigate the number of times we got hurt by his retaliate. This meant we whittled down Wrecker and Bulldozer and waited on those Spinning Web Kicks to use on Piledriver. On my end, getting Iron Man’s helmet out and triggering Aerial each round was SOOOOOO nice. It removed a threat from all the different side schemes in addition to the main scheme. Also, Jessica Jones with her increased Thwart for each side scheme in play was also a big help. Between these cards and my “normal” thwarting techniques (Heroic Intuition + Arc Reactor for multiple thwarts per turn), eventually the side schemes weren’t a problem.

Even with all of this, it wasn’t enough to perfectly hold the Wrecking Crew back. I stayed in hero form to help finish off one, but during the villain phase I ended up taking 2-3 separate attacks. I tried to mitigate them the best I could, but it caused me to die leaving Jeremy having to take care of Thunderball by himself. It took 3 or 4 rounds before Jeremy got the cards he needed to finish him off, so I had to sit back, watch, and hope that he didn’t get pulverized before then. Luckily, he finally got the attack cards he needed and didn’t have to heal/take care of himself and was able to finish off the crew.

I really like this scenario. However, I am concerned about how it would handle at more than 2 players, given how much more HP the villains would have. Typically, people have commented that they like to play Marvel Champions at 1-2 players, but I have had no problem personally with playing the game at 3 or 4 players. This is one of the first scenarios that has given me pause at playing it at higher counts. Regardless, I thought the scenario was definitely a good deviation from the norm and I look forward to trying it again…..and not dying this time.

What did you think of this Battle Report? Have you tried out the Wrecking Crew Yet? Did you even know who the Wrecking Crew were before this pack? Let me know in the comments, or you can hit me up on twitter or facebook.